


palms carved on the altars of death

by kimaracretak



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Altar Sex, Blood Magic, Dubious Archaeology, F/F, Foreshadowing, Rituals, Sith Alchemy, techincally it's ruins-of-an-altar sex but who's counting not them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-23 15:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: They are Sith, and this is her apprentice, and that is exactly why Zash has questions, no matter the soft eyes her apprentice was giving her.[ Zash, the Inquisitor, and plans not-quite-laid. ]





	palms carved on the altars of death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> "But ask me the secrets of Sith alchemy, and I would ask you for three measures of blood: one from a person you love, one from a person you hate, and one from yourself."  
> ― Naga Sadow
> 
> Dark are the souls buried in the depths  
> Drawn forth to serve then die again  
>  _Palms carved on the altars of death_  
>  With one command, to hell descend  
> ― Carnifex, 'No Light Shall Save Us'

Her apprentice slides into their corner booth just late enough to be noticeable, but not quite late enough to be remarked upon. Zash swirls the blue liquid of her drink against its crystal-clear glass, and meets her apprentice's eyes in the reflection.

"You're back early," she says, and waits for an explanation.

Her apprentice's lip curls, a deeply unpleasant expression Zash would cherish were it not directed at her. "Believe me, it's not because I wanted to be."

"You didn't miss me? Careful, apprentice, you might become a proper Sith one day after all." Her apprentice's cheeks colour around her implants, and Zash grins. "So, are you telling me? Or," she reaches out in the Force, prodding lightly at the sparks of black lightning around her apprentice, "are we playing a game here? Dreadfully rude of you to not tell me."

Her apprentice's hand twitches, and Zash can almost feel her reaching for her sabre. "It's no game. I found something that I want you to see."

Zash places her hand on her heart with exaggerated surprise. "A present? Apprentice, you shouldn't have."

Her apprentice sighs. "If you want to think about it like that, I suppose. I'm getting a drink, as long as I'm stuck in this place, and then we'll be off. I have no confidence in the ability of the assorted Mandalorians and Revanites and stars know what is wandering this jungle to leave my discoveries alone."

Zash takes a sip of her own drink, smiling as her apprentice signals one of the waitstaff droids. The woman always was happier crawling around in the dirt, no matter how she insisted it was _archaeology_. She still studied like it was the Academy on Korriban, and yet still managed to report like she was writing some terrible popular-science murder mystery. And it managed to stir something dangerously close to affection in Zash.

Well, no matter. Soon enough that beautiful brain would be hers, just like the rest of her apprentice's beautiful body. Why shouldn't she try to find her enjoyment where she could?

Her apprentice drinks slowly, pretends she isn't watching Zash over the rim of her glass. The red and brown of her brandy glints off her eyes like a sunrise, and Zash takes a moment to admire the sight, trying to quell the curiosity that her apprentice had managed to stir.

"Do I get a hint, at least?" She reaches out with her foot to gently nudge her apprentice's ankle, and grins as she only almost succeeds in disguising how she chokes on her drink.

"It's underground," her apprentice says, when her glass is once more set safely on the table. "And it's something that you'll like."

The second Zash knew already, but the first was an interesting bit of extra information. Underground meant the tombs or the tunnels, and decidedly _not_ the Dark Temple to which she'd sent her apprentice three days ago. So either the woman had gotten impressively sidetracked - not, Zash had to admit to herself, an impossibility - or there was something about the Temple that she wasn't talking about just yet.

Although, now that she was thinking about tombs and temples ... "Where is your little Dashade shadow, apprentice? Have you told _him_ what you've found, where we're going?"

Her apprentice snorts, an oddly delicate sound from her. "Please. Just because someone's your eternal servant in the Force doesn't mean you want to see them at all times. Khem Val is guarding what I've found, and we -" she leans across the table, hands just far enough from Zash's that a casual glance would still find them on the right side of propriety. " _We_ are going to have some time alone to decide what is to be done."

Zash takes a deep breath, and imagines for a moment that she could taste the sharp metal tang of electricity as her apprentice's implants glint an invitingly hard red. "Apprentice," she breathes, and her tone is borne from more truth than she'd like to admit. "You absolutely spoil me."

"Well." Her apprentice drains the rest of her drink, casts a curious look over Zash's still half-full glass. "Just wait until you _see_."

With that sort of promise, it's more than easy to leave the overpriced thing behind.

*

Hardly five minutes into the jungles and she's regretting her eagerness. Her apprentice cheerfully tramples her way through the undergrowth, ducking beneath trees and vines with ease, and beneath her glamour Zash's bones are starting to ache with the damp. There's more reasons than one that apprentices are better suited to these sorts of adventures; she hasn't spent time on this planet outside of Kaas City in - well, the decades blur together, at this point.

But she knows better than to complain in a way that could be taken seriously or for weakness, so she follows without a word and turns her thoughts to more pleasant matters, like what might happen if her apprentice gave in to the humidity and stripped herself of two or three layers of robes.

She'll know soon, when the skin will be her own, and the thought carries her through the rest of the surprisingly empty path, until her apprentice stops at the mouth of a cave.

"In here," she says, and Zash narrows her eyes, trying to recall if she'd seen it on any of the topographical maps that she'd spent years poring over.

"It's a cave, apprentice," she says. "What makes it so special? And where's Khem Val?"

"Guarding the interior, like I said" her apprentice replies, with absolutely no concern. "I know we're Sith, but really, this is me."

They are Sith, and this is her apprentice, and that is exactly why Zash has questions, no matter the soft eyes her apprentice was giving her. Zash sweeps a stray bit of hair away from where it had gotten caught on her apprentice's eyepiece and bends to kiss her, long and lingering. In the Force, she doesn't seem to be a liar, but Zash has seen how much she's grown since the first time she laid eyes on her in Harkun's office.

Her apprentice laughs, nips lightly at Zash's lip as she finally pulls away. "See? Just us. Let's go."

Zash follows once more, breathes a little more easily in the cooler air of the cave. Darkness encroaches more slowly than she'd expected as they follow the spiral path downwards, light still flickering along the walls in a strange mimicry of Force lightning.

"We're just down here," her apprentice says, voice oddly magnified in the enclosed space. Zash can hear their heels against the dirt, feel the dust rising against her skin. As they round the last bend, Khem Val comes into focus, his hulking body looming from the shadows like something built from the ground. "Stay there, Khem, it's just Lord Zash."

Khem Val grumbles something half-intelligible as they pass, but Zash's apprentice doesn't seem to know or care. The edges of her robes flutter in an unseen breeze as she crosses the threshold, and Zash feels a chill run down her own spine, the shift in air pressure making itself known. She glances up at the rocks above and feels, quite suddenly, as if she's rather further underground than she'd walked.

"This," her apprentice says. Zash turns around to find the woman perched on a flat stone outcropping, head in shadows so deep that only the lights of her implants and eyes are visible. "It's an altar, of some sort." She leans forward, and with even that slight of movement, she's suddenly entirely visible again. "I want to activate it."

"Let me guess." Zash picks her way carefully over to the altar, gaze fixed to the floor, searching out any leftover runes or traps. "You shot it and nothing happened, and now you want my help."

Her apprentice pouts and tosses her hair, an expression almost endearing. "I don't _always_ shoot first. Sometimes I dig. Or read. Or make the Dashade shoot it."

"Your caution is overwhelming, as always, apprentice," Zash murmurs. She reaches out and runs her fingers over the stone. "The carvings here - did you read those?"

"Obviously," her apprentice says, though she doesn't bother to clarify whether that was before or after she called lightning down upon it. "See that bit there? The dual hands of passion bloody bound? That's why I went and got you, whatever this is is a matter for the both of us."

Zash squints at the indicated line. The words are in a half-familiar dialect, and while her apprentice's translation seems to capture at least the spirit of what she herself understands, she wonders what nuances she might be missing - or simply keeping to herself.

"Would I lie to you?" Her apprentice seems to sense Zash's hesitation, reaching out to cover her hand as she continues to trace the rough grooves of the altar stone.

"If you are half the Sith I think you have the potential to be then yes, absolutely," Zash says, and smirks as the words elicit a positively wanton moan from her apprentice. "Of course, if it ends badly for me I will absolutely kill you, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it, apprentice?"

"And you told me I said sweet things," her apprentice sighs. When Zash looks up at her, she's procured a knife from somewhere among the folds of her robes. "Go on then. Cut your hand, I want to see."

There's an almost childlike excitement to her voice, but there's nothing childish at all about the hunger in her eyes when she meets Zash's gaze. The raw sexual desire of it - Zash might drown in it forever, and do so gladly, if circumstances permitted.

Circumstances tended to permit only the occasional dalliance, but those were more than enough for Zash, for the most part. Stars willing, circumstances would permit as soon as they found out - or her apprentice explained - what this altar did. "You first, apprentice," she says, with no little impatience.

Her apprentice jumps down off the stone, voice full of mock disappointment as she asks, "You're not going to show me how?"

That one, Zash doesn't dignify with a response, and her apprentice's groan is this time one of frustration as she carefully cuts into her hand around the metal and presses her bleeding palm to the dip at one end of the stone. Zash watches the blood begin to trickle slow and crimson down the central groove, passing one vertical notch and moving on to the next.

"Apprentice," she says slowly.

"Hm?" Her apprentice turns, hair falling loose down her back and shadows flickering over her face. Zash almost asks - she _wants_ to ask, the words are nearly there, _what did you read in Naga Sadow's tomb, what alchemy is this_ \- but the words die on her lips. Her apprentice's skin is paling, the shadows of her bones growing sharper as she continues to bleed onto the altar. Her hand hasn't moved, Zash isn't sure her apprentice could move it if she wanted to.

Because - _passion bloody bound_. It takes the experience of all her years to keep her face blank as the words lock into place.

"I know what you're planning," she says simply. Never mind that there were only two of them, attempting to draw distinctions between hatred and love was beneath Sith. Passion existed, and the Force, and that was all that was necessary - the freedom in not knowing which side of the line one fell on was simply one more freedom that would always be denied the Jedi.

She turns, picks up the knife and slashes her own hand before she can see her apprentice's face crumple into confusion. Hand to stone, she feels the rush of power immediately and draws in a sharp breath as the amount of energy spent on her glamour multiplies. She's bleeding out faster than she'd anticipated.

Zash watches her blood crawl its way down the altar, seeming to pick up in speed as it nears the centre where her apprentice's blood is already pooling. "I must say," she says, and is surprised to find her voice thin in the silence, "I never took you for the marrying type, apprentice. It really wasn't necessary if you just wanted to keep me around."

The innocent confusion drains from her apprentice's face with almost comical slowness, to be replaced by genuine confusion. Zash can see her mouth open on a question, but before she can ask, the stream of Zash's blood reaches the central pool, and as the two streams touch, the entire structure cracks down the middle.

Zash's free arm comes up to shield her face instinctively, and through the sudden whirl of rubble she sees her apprentice - her _wife_ \- do the same. "I did assume you knew," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the clamour of the rocks. "That that was why you took the time to find me instead of immediately roping the Dashade into your experiments."

The altar stone, no longer smooth, is digging painfully into the open wound scoring her palm, and Zash takes comfort in the thought that her apprentice must be in equal discomfort. The physical marks of their binding will take some time to set, and a glance at the entrance to the cavern, now half-covered in shattered debris tells her that they'll be spending that time alone together.

"I knew it was more important than him," her apprentice says. The surprise is fading quickly from her voice, to be replaced by her normal curiosity. "I didn't expect this, necessarily. But I'm sure it's reversible."

Oh, for the careless confidence of youth. The blood and rock will be harder to distinguish on her apprentice's hand, riddled with implants as it is. But they'll remain even after the body is Zash's, and even if such a binding could be undone, Zash is not about to give up such a mark of her claim. "Transformational alchemy does tend towards the permanent," she says. Let her apprentice wonder - Zash needs her to be willing to do several more of these sorts of expeditions. "But I'm not complaining."

"Oh?" The note of hope in her apprentice's voice is ridiculous, but Zash licks her lips at the sight of her, disheveled and bloody and _passionate_ anyway.

"Yes, _oh_ ," she says. "Now, come here so we can move on to the more enjoyable parts of a traditional wedding night."

Her apprentice staggers to her feet for exactly as long as it takes to maneuver herself across the remnants of the altar and into Zash's lap. The hand that hadn't been on the altar flits over Zash's cheek, her wrist, before two fingers slip into her mouth.

Her apprentice tastes of copper and light and the future, and Zash smiles as she worries at the fingers between her teeth. Such trust from her apprentice, now they're bonded. Zash could bite them off without a second thought.

She settles for biting enough to make her apprentice bleed, lapping at the wounds as her apprentice lets her eyes flutter shut and tries and fails to stifle a moan. "Why the modesty, apprentice? We are married now, after all."

"You keep -" her apprentice hisses in genuine pain as Zash's teeth scrape down her palm, dragging a slick trail of blood and saliva with them. "You keep saying _marriage_ like it means something."

"Doesn't it?" Zash looks up innocently through her eyelashes. "Oh, marriage doesn't mean anything to most people, slaves and the like. But you're no slave, are you, apprentice? Marriage can absolutely mean things to people like you and me."

"It's another set of rules and chains," her apprentice snaps, jerking her hand free and wiping it on her robes. Zash nearly makes a comment about the risks of dirt and infection, but her apprentice barrels on before she can do more than open her mouth. "Sith _break_ chains. I was already your apprentice, how dare you tell me that that wasn't enough for you?"

Zash raises an eyebrow. Her apprentice is a beautiful enough thing to behold, eyes dark with fury and impatient sparks of lightning dancing over her knuckles, but she's not used to having that sort of anger directed at her. "Why, apprentice," she says carefully. "Whatever in all the stars gave you that impression? Think of it less of a chain and more of a - an _elevation_ of what we already share. Think of what you'll be able to flaunt for all of Kaas City when we return."

There's other things she might have said, to a different apprentice. Things like _this is what happens when you don't read holocrons before giving them to your master_ , or perhaps, _oh, apprentice, don't bother pretending you don't love being mine_.

On second thought, she files the latter away for future use as she watches her apprentice mull over the idea of going back to Kaas City as Lord Zash's wife. In truth, spousal privileges wouldn't grant her much more than she already had as a Sith apprentice, but it would be a new type of power for her apprentice to crave, broaden her understanding of _ambition_.

And, most importantly, perhaps being amongst her well-dressed new peers would encourage her apprentice to occasionally make sure she wasn't wearing a layer of dirt like a second skin.

"I suppose," her apprentice says slowly. More importantly, she doesn't protest when Zash runs a rough hand through her hair and _tugs_. "I suppose we can live with this. For a little while."

"A little while?" Zash says, and the interest in her tone is hardly faked at all. "What happens after a little while, apprentice?"

Her apprentice shrugs. "You die. Or I do. Don't pretend you don't know the way of the Sith, _my lord_."

There's no mistaking the tone for anything other than mockery. If Zash didn't need her body, if she wasn't so intent on discovering what her apprentice's body felt like inside and out now that they shared marriage blood, she might have killed her on the spot. "I know the way of the Sith well," she says. "And I know that after centuries it's getting dull. You've already gotten us married, apprentice, what's a few more ... transgressions?"

Her apprentice's hands slide their way between their bodies to wrap around Zash's neck. The metal is cold, her grip is tight despite the blood still leaking from her marriage cuts, and Zash sighs in pleasure. "If they cost me my title? They're everything."

"Good answer," Zash says, and her words are thin with lack of air. "But remember. You're wedded to me now, not only the precious glory of our Empire. And what -"

Her words falter, air exhausted as her apprentice squeezes tighter, metal and fragments of stone sinking into the tender skin of her throat. She spares a moment to be grateful that whatever alchemical transmutations that the altar had occasioned hadn't been deep enough to unsettle her glamour.

Eyes shut, she waits, frozen between her apprentice's hands just long enough for her grip to relax to curiosity or concern. she presses forward, her throat working uselessly against her apprentice's hands, and captures the woman's lips with her own. Against her apprentice's mouth she breathes once more as she can feels her lips open to her instantly, despite her protests. Her teeth sink momentarily into Zash's tongue and she is silent when Zash bites her back and swallows their mingled blood. Her mind, though, remains guarded, no matter how Zash prods at it.

But it won't end up mattering. Truth is written in bodies and stone alike, for all her apprentice tries to lie - for all her apprentice _did_ lie, before Zash let the altar rob her of that choice. Her apprentice squirms in Zash's lap, presses slick against her thigh all heat and blood and the promise of future death, so strong that she's practically _begging_ for Zash to slip her hand between her legs and help her get off.

And that - that, Zash can live with with delight, until it's time for her to claim her apprentice's body in a much less traditional way.


End file.
